Trustees obligad to give sectional
title owners access to minutes of meetings - if they want them - and to
allow owners to attend trustee meetings

While many owners of sectional title units take minimal
interest in the actions and decisions of their body corporate - at least
until things are clearly going very wrong - there will always be some who
will resent not being informed if not kept in the loop. In these
circumstances suspicions and allegations, true or false, tend to proliferate.

Michael Bauer, General Manager of IHFM, one of the fastest growing SA
property management companies, says that there is a simple solution to
this situation: owners should ask the trustees for a copy of their minutes.

In terms of the legally binding Prescribed Management Rule No 34,
says Bauer, trustees have to make the minutes of their proceedings
and of the body corporate available to any of their owners or mortgagees.

Prescribed Management Rule 15 (5) stipulates that owners are also
entitled to attend any trustee meetings and to ask questions - although
they are not allowed to vote.

Sometimes, adds Bauer, owners will discover that the trustees meetings
are not being held as regularly as specified  or even that minutes
are not being kept.

It may transpire, he says, that issues pertaining to the
scheme are not being tracked and monitored by the trustees and that the
managing agent is not fulfilling his duties or, conversely, that he is
not receiving full co-operation from the trustees.

Trustees, says Bauer, are by law required to keep minutes of their proceedings,
recording all special resolutions and resolutions taken by the body corporate.